{"id":10061,"date":"2016-01-14T11:50:39","date_gmt":"2016-01-14T11:50:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.britishportraits.org.uk\/?p=10061"},"modified":"2018-04-10T14:00:14","modified_gmt":"2018-04-10T14:00:14","slug":"ubp-annual-seminar-2015-context-is-key-by-hannah-lyons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.britishportraits.org.uk\/blog\/ubp-annual-seminar-2015-context-is-key-by-hannah-lyons\/","title":{"rendered":"UBP Annual Seminar 2015: \u2018Context is key!\u2019 by Hannah Lyons"},"content":{"rendered":"
For a long time I have been following the Understanding British Portraits<\/em> network and this year, having been offered a place and travel bursary, I attended the Annual Seminar<\/a><\/span> for the first time. And I agree with the many delegates who have already stated on various social media channels (@UBPnetwork<\/a><\/span>) that the seminar was a fantastic opportunity to connect, and to exchange ideas, with various colleagues in galleries, museums, historic houses and universities.<\/p>\n Since March 2015 I have been working as the Curatorial Assistant in Christ Church Picture Gallery, Oxford. The impressive portrait collection at Christ Church contains over 300 paintings; these are distributed all over the college, from private rooms to lecture theatres, to semi-public spaces such as the Great Hall. This large collection of portraits<\/a><\/span> has accumulated over the centuries since the foundation of the college in 1525, but is still under-researched. The likenesses stretch from Samson Strong\u2019s 16th-century painting of Cardinal Thomas Wolsey (above), the initial founder of Christ Church, to the contemporary portrait of the former Dean of Christ Church by Saied Dai. But the vast majority of the collection is made up of portraits of notable alumni, including political figures such as George Grenville and William Gladstone, painted by Sir John Everett Millais, literary figures like Charles Dodgson and W H Auden, and clergymen and philosophers such as: Charles Welsey and John Locke. At first glance it appears to be a homogenous group of portraits of educated men, yet the differences in each portrait become more apparent to me every day. These portraits were not usually made for the rooms that they currently inhabit, but they do contribute to the aura of each space and define the institution through its alumni. Since working at Christ Church I have become interested in how the memory of an institution is kept alive through their portraits of their Old Members.<\/p>\n